PPT + MUD = 50%

Now that splinter opposition party PPT has officially joined the MUD, we can point to one important achievement of the Chávez administration: it’s making allies out of parties that have nothing in common with each other.

1 COMMENT

It’s a lonely fight but: it does not follow that MUD + PPT would have garnered > 50% of the vote last September if PPT had openly embraced MUD before the vote.

We should have the intellectual integrity to face up to this.

It is entirely likely that a good number of PPT voters were trying to signal to Chávez that they were revolutionaries but at the same time not happy with PSUV. Given a choice between voting for an outright AD ally and a PSUV they’re not crazy about, they may well have broken the other way. At least some of them might have.

You don’t need to convince me that this is a crazy, contradictory position: I know. Indeed, PPT had just 2.8% of the National Popular vote – so this was hardly a position that took the country by storm. But I find it entirely believable that, say, half (or 40%, or 60% – who can tell?) of the 318,000 people who voted PPT would have marked the PSUV ballot if VTV had spent three days showing images of Henri Falcon hugging Omar Barboza and Henry Ramos ahead of elections.

(BTW, how come nobody ever talks about the 289,000 votes OPINA got!? They almost matched PPT in the Parlatino vote!)

BTW, you could also argue that the division between the PPT and MUD meant many opposition voters stayed home at the frustration of seeing the opposition vote divided. Hence, the PPT + MUD coalition could have gotten some of those voters off their asses, and would therefore have helped the opposition vote be larger.

What I see now is a potential if the alternative parties start sharing some logistics. The fact they all represent different ideologies (or pseudo-ideologies and protocaudillos) should not prevent them from sharing really basic resources, like buses, production of flyers and more, really basic-basic stuff. This was not the case in the previous elections (at least not in Carabobo, Cojedes and Bolívar). We cannot plunder PDVSA as the PSUV does, you know.

i repeat: ask any venezuelan from the top of the rancios amos del valle to the bottom of the food chain: is the country chávez wants to stuff down your throat like an emulsion de scott, the country YOU want?
is chávez’s “view” of evolution and well being for your country the same you want? this my friends is the question and the answer.
evidently the PPT doesn’t think so anymore, so i personlly don’t care if the crossing over to the MUD is ideological, i’m happy it’s just NOT on the same page chávez is, as 65% of the country last time they polled. so… that should be the campaign slogan for 2012. from the country club to el paují and the last pemón.
“is the country he wants for you, the same you want for your country?”.
simple and effective…

“is the country he wants for you, the same you want for your country?”

The question, though I would have liked otherwise, need not really be that ideological. It is enough to know that in the Venezuela Hugo wants and imagines, “I want” and “I think”, from another person or party other than himself, are offensive. Of course much can be made of the fact that most Venezuelans want nothing with the “overt” aims of the Revolution, Socialism or Death. And that such Socialism means dictatorship.

On the other hand, the opposition has to become the opposite, ideologically and pragmatically, from Chavez. They, we, have to understand and make Venezuelans understand that the things the governments of the “Fourth Republic” did and Chavez does (with oil wealth, it’s distribution, and property rights, notoriously) are wrong, period, not that somebody with better intentions might do it “better this time” or “more efficiently”, with “better management”, or with more “regard for civil rights”. If that is not achieved: First, it will be impossible to dismantle the unsustainable model that is the Petrostate. Second, we might as well prepare a huge comeback party for Hugo next election or even sooner. Third, it is quite possible there might not be a country named Venezuela after the lesson is learned.

Beg to differ, they both have in common all that matters to politicians in Venezuela, need for POWER. Why do you think we have a MUD pile and not a SINGLE pro democracy party? Everybody wants their slice of the PIE. (Cabeza de raton is better than cola de leon).
That is why WE the people who are not after POWER but just allowing us to try to ACHIEVE a decent life are not going to get much out of this if MUD wins. Of course we will get much less if PSUV wins.

You got it all wrong. In fact it was the MUD which joined PPT realizing that they need to capture “los desilusionados con los dos lados” if they want to have a chance to first win and then to have won something that stands a slightly better chance of being governable. A PPT candidate, why not Andres Velazques could rock, especially if he based his platform on limiting the oil revenues that the government is allowed to receive on a yearly basis… so as to make it work for the citizen.

However you want to slice it FT, the fact of the matter is that PPT is in the opposition to Chavez, as their leaders have said. So is the MUD. Ergo no amount of discursive contortion or “intellectual integrity” from you is going to change that.